Exploring the Capital Wasteland

Last November I decided to revisit single player RPGs and to try and catch up with the rest of the gaming world and had heard about a couple different games that were good, Mass Effect and Fallout 3.  I ended up ordering both of them and started playing through Mass Effect initially and my first impressions were going well but decided to give Fallout 3 a spin just to make sure the disc and such worked (I buy used games usually – no way in hell I’m forking over $60 for a game unless it’s AMAZING beyond belief or it at least tricks me into thinking it is.  Right Tekken 6?  *grumble*).  Well, my Mass Effect disc was probably pretty lonely for the next 35′ish gaming hours because I played Fallout 3 pretty exclusively on my Xbox from there on till I finished it.

I did end up choosing the Xbox version over the PC version for the ability to sit around on my couch and felt I could enjoy the game more playing in my living room instead of sitting at my computer desk.  There is a mod SDK for the PC version which gives it some more variety and options over the 360 though so I’m not sure if I made the right choice there but I enjoyed the game regardless so I wasn’t too worried about it.

Story

The story of Fallout was pretty compelling for a video game and the ability for your decisions to affect the outcome of some things in the game is a welcome feature.  There’s actually a consequence for being a saint in a disturbing wasteland or being a complete douche.  I opted for sort of a middle-ground, slightly “good” character but didn’t really take shit from the NPC’s either and my moral compass did slip a few times and got impatient with something and just slaughtered someone to steal a quest item or objective or whatever.

The main story line seemed like it was in line with my “good guy” attempt at playing the game and while there was some predictable events through the main story, some of the events were pretty damn cool also which left a pretty fulfilling story experience.

Graphics

The graphics in Fallout 3 were just plain good.  The weapons, characters and everything was well modeled and looked great.  I thought I’d get pretty tired of the wasteland themed desert look and it turned out I was right but it took a lot longer than I thought to reach that point so it beat my expectation there.  I haven’t really ran into many new games that have bad graphics and it seems one of the main reasons for the huge budgets of these games these days.

Gameplay

More aiming on a console controller.  This was one of the other reasons I started second guessing my decision but Fallout’s new VAT targetting system makes the console aiming pretty bearable for my PC gamer roots.  The VAT’s targeting system allows you to sort of pause the fire fight and lock on to specific parts of your enemy, like shooting their leg to keep them from running from you or towards you, etc.  I found myself using this system quite a bit through the game.

Conclusion

Overall, Fallout 3 was an excellent RPG experience and am now looking forward to Fallout New Vegas which is coming out soon.  I may get around to trying the DLC’s for Fallout 3 before then also if I can get through some of my backlog of games.  If you haven’t played Fallout 3, what are you waiting for?

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